‘To truly appreciate a textual conversation, we must explore both resonances and dissonances and understand how one text can reframe and reimagine another.’ Explore this statement in relation to the prescribed texts, Mrs Dalloway and The Hours. A true appreciation of textual conversations stems from an understanding of resonant and dissonant human concerns across disparate texts, reimagined in order to spark dialogue on sociocultural contextual and intertextual influences in shaping experience. Virginia Woolf’s Modernist novel Mrs Dalloway (1925) manifests the psychologically damaged human psyche in post First World War London, and the patriarchal suppression of gendered identity persisting from the conservative Victorian era. The intertextual approach of Stephen Daldry’s postmodern film The Hours (2002) reframes Woolf’s exploration of femininity and mental illness, sparking an appreciation of their symbiotic relationship as “part of a greater network of ideas and influences” (Brian McFarlane). This textual dialogue thereby reveals these concerns and their execution as inextricably shaped by respective contexts and values. Female Identity – Mrs Dalloway As a product of its Modern zeitgeist, Mrs Dalloway explores the tension between patriarchal dictates and female desires to resist socially constructed identities, elucidating their deep dissatisfaction and desire for autonomy. • Within a Modern society imposing heterosexual norms on the ideal marriage dynamic, Woolf’s emphasis on the domesticated title “not even Clarissa anymore, this being Mrs Richard Dalloway” illuminates the diminishment of female identity as extensions of their commanding husbands. • As such, Clarissa’s asyndetic self-deprecation “feeling herself suddenly shrivelled, aged, breastless”, hyperbolises the fractured sense of feminine
self-worth produced by patriarchal expectations of domestication and motherhood. • Woolf also highlights Clarissa’s dissatisfaction in adhering to the Modern ideal “successful man’s wife”, implied by her ironic parenthesis “([speaking] of marriage always as a catastrophe)”, reminiscing instead on the freedom of “the old days with Sally Seton”. • However, the Modern alienation of her Sapphic desires sparks a confused rhetorical questioning of “Had not that…been love?”, igniting a responders’ critical reflection of the destructive role of heterosexual norms in suppressing the fluidity of female identity.
Mrs Dalloway communicates the gendered suppression observed in the Modern milieu; a thematic continuity reframed in The Hours, allowing for an appreciation of their commonalities and disparities in sociocultural contexts. Female Identity – The Hours While Woolf scathingly critiques the flawed patriarchal suppression of female identity, The Hours sparks an appreciation of contextual and intertextual influences, resonating with and reframing the dissatisfied female psyche through a supposedly progressive Post-modern lens. • Seamlessly transitioning between disparate timelines in the opening scenes; the floral imagery and unsaturated colour palette visually unite the female protagonists in a proliferation of Mrs Dalloway’s single narrative of domestic entrapment. • Through Laura Brown’s visceral dream sequence, Daldry’s overhead shot of her submergence in water symbolises her desire to escape domestic confinement, resonating with Woolf’s representation of depreciated feminine self-worth. In a distinctly Postmodern resistance of convention, this
surrealistic scene departs from the unsaturated realism of the film, illuminating the divergence of textual form across Woolf and Daldry’s contexts. • Daldry also reimagines the novel’s tension between suppression and desire by paradoxically uniting three disparate timelines through a motif of kisses, each vividly symbolic of an embrace of sexuality over their social climates of domesticity. • However, while Laura’s kiss with Kitty is followed by the latter’s feigned confusion of “What? I didn’t mind what?”, Clarissa and Sally are united in a close embrace, reflecting the Postmodern era’s evolving normalisation of Sapphic relationships following second wave Feminism.
The Hours thus engages with Woolf’s exploration of gendered suppression, revealing both resonant and dissonant contextual views towards female identity. Mental Illness – Mrs Dalloway Amidst a Modern epoch recovering from the carnage of the First World War, Mrs Dalloway’s fragmented streams of consciousness illuminate the inadequacy of medical institutions in aiding the psychologically disillusioned individual.
• As a manifestation of Woolf’s own traumatic experiences, Dr Bradshaw’s accumulative repetition of “rest, rest, rest; a long rest in bed”, reveals Modern society’s rudimentary diagnosis of psychological trauma as a mere moral weakness. • This misunderstanding accumulates to Septimus’ impassive tone in “he had not cared when Evans was killed”, thereby informing the archetypical façade of stoicism made conventional by the Modern institutional suppression of ‘shell-shocked’ victims of war.
• Through Clarissa’s rhetorical question “What business had the Bradshaws to talk of death at her party?” Woolf invites the audience to examine the Modernist trivialisation of mental illness as a disruption into the quotidian lives of the remaining civilisation. • This is jarringly juxtaposed with Septimus’ truncated revelation “he did not want to die. Life was good”, with his ensuing suicide epitomising the suppressive tendencies of Modern scientific remedies, which ultimately outweighed his desire to live.
Thus, Woolf ignites the audience’s understanding of the suppressive and inadequate treatment of mental illness within a post-war Modern social climate, transcending temporal restrictions to be reimagined through the crippling AIDS crisis of The Hours. Mental Illness – The Hours Reframing Woolf’s exploration of mental illness through a Postmodern lens, The Hours’ tripartite structure extends her critique of institutional suppression to both the rigidity of Victorian England, and the contemporary AIDS crisis. • By foregrounding Woolf’s unsettling body language over the background of the train station, Daldry echoes Sir Bradshaw in exposing Woolf’s suffocating isolation in Richmond, as the supposed remedy for mental illness imposed by the “contemptible Victorians”. • However, Leonard’s frustrated expression “We brought you here to save you” juxtaposes Woolf’s distressed statement “I wrestle alone in the dark”, resonating with the misunderstanding of psychological trauma which led to Septimus’ alienation as “the eternal sufferer”. • Daldry also reimagines mental illness through the characterisation of the ‘poetic visionary’ Richard, whose emancipated frame and infantile rocket
print dressing gown mirrors Septimus’ lost cognitive coherence, reflecting his entrapment in the trauma of his childhood. • However, Daldry ignites an appreciation of contextual dissonances through Richard’s intertextual allusion, “Mrs Dalloway, it’s you…but now you have to let me go”, diverging from the novel in its contemporary perspective on suicide as an embrace of death, rather than catalysed by a fear of life.
Thus, a concurrent examination of both texts in a continuous literary dialogue draws an appreciation of the resonant and dissonant experiences of psychological trauma between disparate sociocultural contexts. Time and Mortality – Mrs Dalloway Amidst a Modern epoch recovering from the carnage of the First World War, Mrs Dalloway’s nonlinear representation of psychological and external time enhances an understanding of subjective confrontations of mortality. • Through the motif of the Big Ben clock “beginning to strike, first the warning, musical; then the hour, irrevocable”, Woolf metaphorically likens the clock’s intrusive toll to the hyperawareness of death characteristic of 1923 post war London. • The juxtaposition of the Big Ben and personified St. Margaret’s clock gliding “into the recesses of the heart” present Bergson’s dichotomous perceptions of external and internal time; as both a reminder of ineluctable mortality, and an embrace of the moment. • Clarissa’s stream of consciousness introspection; “did it matter that she must inevitably cease completely” further inspires an appreciation of the Modern minutiae, resisting the fear of mortality which plagued her post-war civilisation.
• Mrs Dalloway also depicts a distinctly Modern re-examination of existence by presenting the experience of death as inherently subjective, initially revealing Septimus’ truncated appreciation of life in “He did not want to die. Life was good”. • However, Clarissa’s juxtaposing condemnation of Septimus as having “thrown [life] away while they went on living” evidences Woolf’s rejection of grand narratives of mortality as a universal experience. Mrs Dalloway thus demonstrates the Modern perspectives of psychological time and subjective mortality which influenced Woolf’s construction; later reframed through the fragmented form of The Hours. Time and Mortality – The Hours In responding to Mrs Dalloway, Daldry resonates with Woolf’s nonlinear narratives of inevitable mortality, while presenting a markedly Post-modern rejection of absolute truth. • The film’s fragmented shots diverge from the stream-of-consciousness novel, while aligning with Woolf’s Bergsonian representations of nonlinear time to reveal enduring concerns of inescapable mortality through a contemporary lens. • The ceaseless circularity of Glass’ composition mirrors the clock motif of Mrs Dalloway, penetrating through climactic moments such as Virginia and Richard’s suicide as an evocative reminder of relentless temporal progression. Daldry thereby utilises this aural and symbolic mechanism to realise the enduring sense of urgency which plagues both the Modern and contemporary individual. • Furthermore, Virginia’s imperative tone “if it is a choice between Richmond and death, I choose death”, parallels the antithesis in Laura’s assertion, “It
was death. I chose life”, extending Woolf’s Modern perspective on subjective mortality through a Postmodern framework. • However, Julia’s disparaging tone in defining Laura as “the monster” inclines the reader to condemn Laura’s choice of life over death, thereby illuminating the role of evolving social attitudes in shaping an individual’s perspective on mortality.
The Hours thus resonates with Mrs Dalloway’s depictions of inevitable mortality and fragmented time, using divergent form features to foster an appreciation of context and intertextuality in highlighting enduring and evolving human concerns. Conclusion Our appreciation of textual conversations is enhanced by exploring societal attitudes and intertextuality in uniquely shaping the construction of texts, highlighting resonant core concerns of the human condition across dissonant textual forms and time periods. A comparative study of Mrs Dalloway and The Hours illuminates enduring and evolving qualities of gendered and psychological suppression, thus enhancing new perceptions of texts as facets of a singular trajectory.